


Write a letter to someone who hurt you and one to someone you hurt.

by JohnHHolliday (Methleigh)



Category: 19th Century US RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Methleigh/pseuds/JohnHHolliday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can't quite manage it, even prolific as he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Write a letter to someone who hurt you and one to someone you hurt.

Dear Major,  
You know how I feel...

There is nothing to say. John is not one to keep his opinions or feelings, much less his outrage, to himself. He is still angry, still bitter, still betrayed. His father had married _married_ a young girl six weeks _six weeks_ after his mother died. His father had betrayed the Confederacy, as far as John is concerned. Then there is the matter of his adopting other children and valuing them more than John. Rachel, his child bride to replace John's _mother_ had been the final offence. The thought of what they must have been doing and thinking, with her lying ill and dying, in pain even now causes John to clench his hand around the pen, threatening to snap it. Nothing has changed. His father is not repentant. John has no regret. He has already communicated his anger, which persists after almost two decades. 

There is nothing to say. He will not even say 'Father.' Crumpling the scarcely started correspondence, he begins another.

Dear Uncle John,  
 _You were my father in so many ways._

It has been a long time since I have seen you and your family _my family_ and our fair Georgia. I surely miss you all and the old balmy climate, and even the smell of the earth. Colorado, where I now find myself, if bracing and clear, is also dry, hard edged and always cold. I remember well and think often of those wonderful times before the war at your old home, as well as your kind and familial hospitality after I left Valdosta. How bright and full of promise the world seemed then! 

_Uncle John, I did not fulfill your hopes for me. Robert waits still for me, holding that hope and faith. I have done what I had to do. But I am not a dentist now, as I had intended. I am not a dentist as you had hoped for me. My life has not been the one you would have chosen for me. I can read your sorrow in the tone and the words that are missing from your letters. Sorrow for me - that I am not fine and happy; that all the bright excitement we felt as we discussed the future of dentistry has come to naught for me. Uncle John, I am held here now by false charges that will never come to court, held lest other false charges remove me to be murdered._

_Uncle John, you treated me like a son. Uncle John, I can never come home._

John fingers his uncles gift - the bright diamond of his stickpin. He crumples this letter as well.

Dear Robert,  
I find myself in Colorado, in another mining town with the beautiful and evocative name of Silver Plume. I find myself contemplating the effects of the policies of the current government on the silver market, which will surely determine the rises and falls of my fortunes here...


End file.
